G2 Esports’ excuse for vactioning before 2016 MSI

G2 Esports were a dark horse team to win the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) for a lot of people, but things could not have gone worse for the European champions in the first two days as they find themselves dead last in the group stages with a 0-4 record.

After their loss to Flash Wolves yesterday, mid laner Luka “PerkZ” Perkovic admitted that the team did not practice for the event.

To no surprise, the announcement of not practicing led to a lot of backlash from the community.

After their beating from Counter Logic Gaming, the team released an official announcement to excuse their decision. “Following a rigorous Spring Split with practice, scrims and official games for 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week for 3 months straight, it was important for the mental state of our players to be allowed to take some time away from the game, visit their families and reset for MSI and the following Summer Split. While staying in our gaming house in Berlin as a unit could have offered some team practice, the quality of that practice would not have done anything to help improve our team play leading up towards MSI and the level of teams attending here. Planning a bootcamp in China / Asia before MSI proved difficult, due to the VISA application process and the uncertainty of knowing whether we’d qualify or not.

They followed that up with: “Between the final day in Rotterdam and the start of the summer split the team have 23 days. 12 of those are before MSI, so spending that time practicing against Challenger level teams would have been detrimental towards our level of play for MSI, leading into to the Summer Split and the ultimate challenge; the World Championship.”

The fact that they are making all these excuses for themselves is extremely frustrating. If you wanted to take a vacation, that’s fine, but own up to your decision and admit that it was the wrong thing to do. It’s almost insulting that they mentioned how much work they do during the season, because all the other teams at MSI go through the same exact thing.

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This whole situation is head-scratching, but what’s most confusing is why would G2 be afraid of burning out? This past split was their first ever one in the League Championship Series, and MSI is their first ever international event. They should have had all the motivation in the world to work hard and make a statement on the international stage.

However, if the team thought they absolutely needed a vacation, why the heck couldn’t it wait until after MSI? That would allow them a break before another long split, and that seems more effective than taking a break before MSI.

This whole this just makes no sense.

The final part of the G2 announcement said, “We are greatly honored to be representing our region at this tournament and we are doing our best to improve each game, and make our fans and Europe proud despite the hard difficulty of making it through.”

It’s as if G2 are straight up lying to their fans. If the team was greatly honored to represent your region and you wanted to make people proud, they would have practiced tirelessly to win the event.

The fact of the matter is that G2 didn’t take MSI seriously. It would be nice to see them turn things around, but they look like a defeated team.

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